held responsible for the reverse, and was shot, notwithstanding the
protests of Voltaire and of Richelieu himself.  At the same time the
king's troops were occupying Corsica in the name of the city of Genoa,
the time-honored ally of France.  Mistress of half the Mediterranean, and
secure of the neutrality of Holland, France could have concentrated her
efforts upon the sea, and have maintained a glorious struggle with
England, on the sole condition of keeping peace on the Continent.  The
policy was simple, and the national interest palpable; King Louis XV.
and some of his ministers understood this; but they allowed themselves to
drift into forgetfulness of it.

For a long time past, under the influence of Count Kaunitz, a young
diplomat equally bold and shrewd, "frivolous in his tastes and profound
in his views," Maria Theresa was inclining to change the whole system of
her alliances in Europe; she had made advances to France.  Count Kaunitz
had found means of pleasing Madame de Pompadour; the empress put the
crowning touch to the conquest by writing herself to the favorite, whom
she called "My cousin."  The Great Frederick, on the contrary, all the
time that he was seeking to renew with the king his former offensive and
defensive relations, could not manage to restrain the flow of his bitter
irony.  Louis XV. had felt hurt, on his own account and on his
favorite's; he still sought to hold the balance steady between the two
great German sovereigns, but he was already beginning to lean towards the
empress.  A proposal was made to Maria Theresa for a treaty of guarantee
between France, Austria, and Prussia; the existing war between England
and France was excepted from the defensive pact; France reserved to
herself the right of invading Hanover.  The same conditions had been
offered to the King of Prussia; he was not contented with them.  Whilst
Maria Theresa was insisting at Paris upon obtaining an offensive as well
as defensive alliance, Frederick II. was signing with England an
engagement not to permit the entrance into Germany of any foreign troops.
"I only wish to preserve Germany from war," wrote the King of Prussia to
Louis XV.  On the 1st of May, 1756, at Versailles, Louis XV. replied to
the Anglo-Prussian treaty by his alliance with the Empress Maria Theresa.
The house of Bourbon was holding out the hand to the house of Austria;
the work of Henry IV. and of Richelieu, already weakened by an
inconsistent and capricious policy, was completely crumbling to pieces,
involving in its ruin the military fortunes of France.

The prudent moderation of Abbe de Bernis, then in great favor with Madame
de Pompadour, and managing the negotiations with Austria, had removed
from the treaty of Versailles the most alarming clauses.  The empress and
the King of France mutually guaranteed to one another their possessions
in Europe, "each of the contracting parties promising the other, in case
of need, the assistance of twenty-four thousand men."  Russia and Saxony
were soon enlisted in the same alliance; the King of Prussia's
pleasantries, at one time coarse and at another biting, had offended the
Czarina Elizabeth and the Elector of Saxony as well as Louis XV. and
Madame de Pompadour.  The weakest of the allies was the first to
experience the miseries of that war so frivolously and gratuitously
entered upon, from covetousness, rancor, or weakness, those fertile
sources of the bitterest sorrows to humanity.

"It is said that the King of Prussia's troops are on the march," wrote
the Duke of Luynes in his journal (September 3, 1756); "it is not said
whither."  Frederick II. was indeed on the march with his usual
promptitude; a few days later, Saxony was invaded, Dresden occupied, and
the Elector-king of Poland invested in the camp of Pirna.  General Braun,
hurrying up with the Austrians to the Saxons' aid, was attacked by
Frederick on the 1st of October, near Lowositz; without being decisive,
the battle was, nevertheless, sufficient to hinder the allies from
effecting their junction.  The Saxons attempted to cut their way through;
they were hemmed in and obliged to lay down their arms; the King of
Prussia established himself at Dresden, levying upon Saxony enormous
military contributions and otherwise treating it as a conquered country.
The unlucky elector had taken refuge in Poland.

The empress had not waited for this serious reverse to claim from France
the promised aid.  By this time it was understood how insufficient would
be a body of twenty-four thousand men for a distant and hazardous war.
Recently called to the council by King Louis XV., Marshal Belle-Isle,
still full of daring in spite of his age, loudly declared that, "since
war had come, it must be made on a large scale if it were to be made to
any purpose, and speedily."  Some weeks later, preparations were
commenced for sending an army of a hundred thousand men to the Lower
Rhine.  The king undertook, besides, to pay four thousand Bavarians and
six thousand Wurtemburgers, who were to serve in the Austrian army.
Marshal d'Estrees, grandson of Louvois, was placed at the head of the
army already formed.  He was not one of the favorite's particular
friends.  a Marshal d'Estrees," she wrote to Count Clermont, "is one of
my acquaintances in society; I have never been in a position to make him
an intimate friend, but were he as much so as M. de Soubise, I should not
take upon myself to procure his appointment, for fear of having to
reproach myself with the results."  Madame de Pompadour did not continue
to be always so reserved, and M. de Soubise was destined before long to
have his turn.  M. de Belle-Isle had insisted strongly on the choice of
Marshal d'Estrees; he was called "the Temporizer," and was equally brave
and prudent.  "I am accustomed," said the king, "to hear from him all he
thinks."  The army was already on the march.

Whilst hostilities were thus beginning throughout Europe, whilst
negotiations were still going on with Vienna touching the second treaty
of Versailles, King Louis XV., as he was descending the staircase of the
marble court at Versailles on the 5th of January, 1757, received a stab
in the side from a knife.  Withdrawing full of blood the hand he had
clapped to his wound, the king exclaimed, "There is the man who wounded
me, with his hat-on; arrest him, but let no harm be done him!"  The
guards were already upon the murderer and were torturing him pending the
legal question.  The king had been carried away, slightly wounded by a
deep puncture from a penknife.  In the soul of Louis XV. apprehension had
succeeded to the first instinctive and kingly impulse of courage; he
feared the weapon might be poisoned, and hastily sent for a confessor.
The crowd of courtiers was already thronging to the dauphin's.  To him
the king had at once given up the direction of affairs.

[Illustration: Assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens----221]

Justice, meanwhile, had taken the wretched murderer in hand.  Robert
Damiens was a lackey out of place, a native of Artois, of weak mind, and
sometimes appearing to be deranged.  In his vague and frequently
incoherent depositions, he appeared animated by a desire to avenge the
wrongs of the Parliament; he burst out against the Archbishop of Paris,
Christopher de Beaumont, a virtuous prelate of narrow mind and austere
character.  "The Archbishop of Paris," he said, "is the cause of all this
trouble through ordering refusal of the sacraments."  No investigation
could discover any conspiracy or accomplices; with less coolness and
fanatical resolution than Ravaillac, Damiens, like the assassin of Henry
IV., was an isolated criminal, prompted to murder by the derangement of
his own mind; he died, like Ravaillac, amidst fearful tortures which were
no longer in accord with public sentiment and caused more horror than
awe.  France had ceased to tremble for the life of King Louis XV.

For one instant the power of Madame de Pompadour had appeared to be
shaken; the king, in his terror, would not see her; M. de Machault, but
lately her protege, had even brought her orders to quit the palace.
Together with the salutary terrors of death, Louis XV.'s repentance soon
disappeared; the queen and the dauphin went back again to the modest and
pious retirement in which they passed their life; the marchioness
returned in triumph to Versailles.  MM. de Machault and D'Argenson were
exiled; the latter, who had always been hostile to the favorite, was
dismissed with extreme harshness.  The king had himself written the
sealed letter "Your services are no longer required.  I command you to
send me your resignation of the secretaryship of state for war, and of
all that appertains to the posts connected therewith, and to retire to
your estate of Ormes."  Madame de Pompadour was avenged.

The war, meanwhile, continued; the King of Prussia, who had at first won
a splendid victory over the Austrians in front of Prague, had been beaten
at Kolin, and forced to fall back on Saxony.  Marshal d'Estrees, slowly
occupying Westphalia, had got the Duke of Cumberland into a corner on the
Weser.

On the morning of July 23, 1757, the marshal summoned all his
lieutenant-generals.  "Gentlemen," he said to them, "I do not assemble
you to-day to ask whether we should attack M. de Cumberland and invest
Hameln.  The honor of the king's arms, his wishes, his express orders,
the interest of the common cause, all call for the strongest measures.  I
only seek, therefore, to profit by your lights, and to combine with your
assistance the means most proper for attacking with advantage."  A day or
two after, July 26, the Duke of Cumberland, who had fallen back on the
village of Hastenbeck, had his intrenchments forced; he succeeded in
beating a retreat without being pursued; an able movement of Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick, and a perhaps intentional mistake on the part of
M. de Maillebois had caused a momentary confusion in the French army.
Marshal d'Estrees, however, was not destined to enjoy for long the
pleasure of his victory.  Even before he had given battle the Duke of
Richelieu had set out from Versailles to supersede him in his command.

The conquest of Port Mahon had thrown around Richelieu a halo of glory;
in Germany, he reaped the fruits of Marshal d'Estrees' successes; the
Electorate of Hanover was entirely occupied; all the towns opened their
gates; Hesse Cassel, Brunswick, the duchies of Verden and of Bremen met
with the same fate.  The marshal levied on all the conquered countries
heavy contributions, of which he pocketed a considerable portion.  His
soldiers called him "Father La Maraude."  The pavilion of Hanover at
Paris was built out of the spoils of Germany.  Meanwhile, the Duke of
Cumberland, who had taken refuge in the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe,
under the protection of English vessels, was demanding to capitulate; his
offers were lightly accepted.  On the 8th of September, through the
agency of Count Lynar, minister of the King of Denmark, the Duke of
Cumberland and the marshal signed at the advanced posts of the French
army the famous convention of Closter-Severn.  The king's troops kept all
the conquered country; those of Hesse, Brunswick, and Saxe-Gotha returned
to their homes; the Hanoverians were to be cantoned in the neighborhood
of Stade.  The marshal had not taken the precaution of disarming them.

Incomplete as the convention was, it nevertheless excited great emotion
in Europe.  The Duke of Cumberland had lost the military reputation
acquired at Fontenoy; the King of Prussia remained alone on the
Continent, exposed to all the efforts of the allies; every day fresh
reverses came down upon him; the Russian army had invaded the Prussian
provinces and beaten Marshal Schwald near Memel; twenty-five thousand
Swedes had just landed in Pomerania.  Desertion prevailed amongst the
troops of Frederick, recruited as they often were from amongst the
vanquished; it was in vain that the king, in his despair, shouted out on
the battle-field of Kolin, "D'ye expect to live forever, pray?"  Many
Saxon or Silesian soldiers secretly left the army.  One day Frederick
himself kept his eye on a grenadier whom he had seen skulking to the rear
of the camp.  "Whither goest thou?" he cried.  "Faith, sir," was the
answer, "I am deserting; I'm getting tired of being always beaten."  "
Stay once more," replied the king, without showing the slightest anger;
"I promise that, if we are beaten, we will both desert together."  In the
ensuing battle the grenadier got himself killed.

For a moment, indeed, Frederick had conceived the idea of deserting
simultaneously from the field of battle and from life.  "My dear sister,"
he wrote to the Margravine of Baireuth, "there is no port or asylum for
me any more save in the arms of death."  A letter in verse to the Marquis
of Argens pointed clearly to the notion of suicide.  A firmer purpose,
before long, animated that soul, that strange mixture of heroism and
corruption.  The King of Prussia wrote to Voltaire,--

"Threatened with shipwreck though I be,
I, facing storms that frown on me,
Must king-like think, and live, and die."

Fortune, moreover, seemed to be relaxing her severities.  Under the
influence of the hereditary grand-duke, a passionate admirer of Frederick
II., the Russians had omitted to profit by their victories; they were by
this time wintering in Poland, which was abandoned to all their
exactions.  The Swedes had been repulsed in the Island of Rugen, Marshal
Richelieu received from Versailles orders to remain at Halberstadt, and
to send re-enforcements to the army of the Prince of Soubise; it was for
this latter that Madame de Pompadour was reserving the honor of crushing
the Great Frederick.  More occupied in pillage than in vigorously pushing
forward the war, the marshal tolerated a fatal license amongst his
troops.  "Brigandage is more prevalent in the hearts of the superior
officers than in the conduct of the private soldier, who is full of good
will to go and get shot, but not at all to submit to discipline.  I'm
afraid that they do not see at court the alarming state of things to
their full extent," says a letter from Paris-Duverney to the Marquis of
Cremille, "but I have heard so much of it, and perhaps seen so much since
I have been within eyeshot of this army, that I cannot give a glance at
the future without being transfixed with grief and dread.  I dare to say
that I am not scared more than another at sight of abuses and disorder,
but it is time to apply to an evil which is at its height other remedies
than palliatives, which, for the most part, merely aggravate it and
render it incurable as long as war lasts.  I have not seen and do not see
here anything but what overwhelms me, and I feel still more wretched for
having been the witness of it."

Whilst the plunder of Hanover was serving the purpose of feeding the
insensate extravagance of Richelieu and of the army, Frederick II. had
entered Saxony, hurling back into Thuringia the troops of Soubise and of
the Prince of Hildburghausen.  By this time the allies had endured
several reverses; the boldness of the King of Prussia's movements
bewildered and disquieted officers as well as soldiers.  "Might I ask
your Highness what you think of his Prussian majesty's manoeuvring?"
says a letter to Count Clermont, from an officer serving in the army of
Germany; "this prince, with eighteen or twenty thousand men at most,
marches upon an army of fifty thousand men, forces it to recross a river,
cuts off its rear guard, crosses this same river before its very eyes,
offers battle, retires, encamps leisurely, and loses not a man.  What
calculation, what audacity in this fashion of covering a country!"  On
the 3d of November the Prussian army was all in order of battle on the
left bank of the Saale, near Rosbach.

Soubise hesitated to attack; being a man of honesty and sense, he took
into account the disposition of his army, as well as the bad composition
of the allied forces, very superior in number to the French contingent.
The command belonged to the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen, who had no doubt
of success.  Orders were given to turn the little Prussian army, so as to
cut off its retreat.  All at once, as the allied troops were effecting
their movement to scale the heights, the King of Prussia, suddenly
changing front by one of those rapid evolutions to which he had
accustomed his men, unexpectedly attacked the French in flank, without
giving them time to form in order of battle.  The batteries placed on the
hills were at the same time unmasked, and mowed down the infantry.  The
German troops at once broke up.  Soubise sought to restore the battle by
cavalry charges, but he was crushed in his turn.  The rout became
general; the French did not rally till they reached Erfurt; they had left
eight thousand prisoners and three thousand dead on the field.

The news of the defeat at Rosbach came bursting on France like a clap of
thunder; the wrath, which first of all blazed out against Soubise, at
whose expense all the rhymesters were busy, was reflected upon the king
and Madame de Pompadour.

"With lamp in hand, Soubise is heard to say
'Why, where the devil can my army be?
I saw it hereabouts but yesterday:
Has it been taken?  has it strayed from me?
I'm always losing-head and all, I know:
But wait till daylight, twelve o'clock or so!
What do I see?  O, heavens, my heart's aglow:
Prodigious luck !  Why, there it is, it is!
Eh! _ventrebleu,_ what in the world is this?
I must have been mistaken--it's the foe.'"

Frederick II. had renovated affairs and spirits in Germany; the day after
Rosbach, he led his troops into Silesia against Prince Charles of
Lorraine, who had just beaten the Duke of Bevern; the King of Prussia's
lieutenants were displeased and disquieted at such audacity.  He
assembled a council of war, and then, when he had expounded his plans,
"Farewell, gentlemen," said be; "we shall soon have beaten the enemy,
or we shall have looked on one another for the last time."  On the 3d of
December the Austrians were beaten at Lissa, as the French had been at
Rosbach, and Frederick II. became the national hero of Germany; the
Protestant powers, but lately engaged, to their sorrow, against him, made
up to the conqueror; admiration for him permeated even the French army.
"At Paris," wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire, "everybody's head is turned
about the King of Prussia; five months ago he was trailed in the mire."

"Cabinet-generals," says Duclos, "greedy of money, inexperienced and
presumptuous; ignorant, jealous, or ill-disposed ministers; subalterns
lavish of their blood on the battle-field and crawling at court before
the distributors of favors--such are the instruments we employed.  The
small number of those who had not approved of the treaty of Versailles
declared loudly against it; after the campaign of 1757, those who had
regarded it as a masterpiece of policy, forgot or disavowed their
eulogies, and the bulk of the public, who cannot be decided by anything
but the event, looked upon it as the source of all our woes."  The
counsels of Abbe de Bernis had for some time past been pacific; from a
court-abbe, elegant and glib, he had become, on the 25th of June,
minister of foreign affairs.  But Madame de Pompadour remained faithful
to the empress.  In the month of January, 1758, Count Clermont was
appointed general-in-chief of the army of Germany.  In disregard of the
convention of Closter-Severn, the Hanoverian troops had just taken the
field again under the orders of the Grand-Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick; he
had already recovered possession of the districts of Luneberg, Zell, a
part of Brunswick and of Bremen.  In England, Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord
Chatham, had again come into office; the King of Prussia could henceforth
rely upon the firmest support from Great Britain.

He had need of it.  A fresh invasion of Russians, aided by the savage
hordes of the Zaporoguian Cossacks, was devastating Prussia; the
sanguinary battle of Zorndorf, forcing them to fall back on Poland,
permitted Frederick to hurry into Saxony, which was attacked by the
Austrians.  General Daun surprised and defeated him at Hochkirch; in
spite of his inflexible resolution, the King of Prussia was obliged to
abandon Saxony.  His ally and rival, Ferdinand of Brunswick, had just
beaten Count Clermont at Crevelt.

The new commander-in-chief of the king's armies, prince of the blood,
brother of the late Monsieur le Duc, abbot commendatory of St. Germain-
des-Pres, "general of the Benedictines,", as the soldiers said, had
brought into Germany, together with the favor of Madame de Pompadour,
upright intentions, a sincere desire to restore discipline, and some
great illusions about himself.  "I am very impatient, I do assure you,
to be on the other side of the Rhine," wrote Count Clermont to Marshal
Belle-Isle; "all the country about here is infested by runaway soldiers,
convalescents, camp-followers, all sorts of understrappers, who commit
fearful crimes.  Not a single officer does his duty; they are the first
to pillage; all the army ought to be put under escort and in detachments,
and then there would have to be escorts for those escorts.  I hang, I
imprison; but, as we march by cantonments and the regimental
(particuliers) officers are the first to show a bad example, the
punishments are neither sufficiently known nor sufficiently seen.
Everything smacks of indiscipline, of disgust at the king's service,
and of asperity towards one's self.  I see with pain that it will be
indispensable to put in practice the most violent and the harshest
measures."  The king's army, meanwhile, was continuing to fall back; a
general outcry arose at Paris against the general's supineness.  On the
23d of June he was surprised by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in the strong
position of Crevelt, which he had occupied for two days past; the
reserves did not advance in time, orders to retreat were given too soon,
the battle was lost without disaster and without any rout; the general
was lost as well as the battle.  "It is certain," says the Marquis of
Vogel, in his narrative of the affair, "that Count Clermont was at table
in his headquarters of Weschelen at one o'clock, that he had lost the
battle before six, arrived at Reuss at half past ten, and went to bed at
midnight; that is doing a great deal in a short time."  The Count of
Gisors, son of Marshal Belle-Isle, a young officer of the greatest
promise, had been killed at Crevelt; Count Clermont was superseded by the
Marquis of Contades.  The army murmured; they had no confidence in their
leaders.  At Versailles, Abbe de Bernis, who had lately become a
cardinal, paid by his disgrace for the persistency he had shown in
advising peace.  He was chatting with M. de Stahrenberg, the Austrian
ambassador, when he received a letter from the king, sending him off to
his abbey of St. Medard de Soissons.  He continued the conversation
without changing countenance, and then, breaking off the conversation
just as the ambassador was beginning to speak of business.  "It is no
longer to me, sir," he said, "that you must explain yourself on these
great topics; I have just received my dismissal from his Majesty."  With
the same coolness he quitted the court and returned, pending his embassy
to Rome, to those elegant intellectual pleasures which suited him better
than the crushing weight of a ministry in disastrous times, under an
indolent and vain-minded monarch, who was governed by a woman as
headstrong as she was frivolous and depraved.

Madame de Pompadour had just procured for herself a support in her
obstinate bellicosity.  Cardinal Bernis was superseded in the ministry of
foreign affairs by Count Stainville, who was created Duke of Choiseul.
After the death of Marshal Belle-Isle he exchanged the office for that of
minister of war; with it he combined the ministry of the marine.  The
foreign affairs were intrusted to the Duke of Praslin, his cousin.  The
power rested almost entirely in the hands of the Duke of Choiseul.  Of
high birth, clever, bold, ambitious, he had but lately aspired to couple
the splendor of successes in the fashionable world with the serious
preoccupations of politics; his marriage with Mdlle. Crozat, a wealthy
heiress, amiable and very much smitten with him, had strengthened his
position.  Elevated to the ministry by Madame de Pompadour, and as yet
promoting her views, he nevertheless gave signs of an independent spirit
and a proud character, capable of exercising authority firmly in the
presence and the teeth of all obstacles.  France hoped to find once more
in M. de Choiseul a great minister; nor were her hopes destined to be
completely deceived.

A new and secret treaty had just riveted the alliance between France and
Austria.  M. de Choiseul was at the same time dreaming of attacking
England in her own very home, thus dealing her the most formidable of
blows.  The preparations were considerable.  M. de Soubise was recalled
from Germany to direct the army of invasion.  He was to be seconded in
his command by the Duke of Aiguillon, to whom, rightly or wrongly, was
attributed the honor of having repulsed in the preceding year an attempt
of the English at a descent upon the coasts of Brittany.  The expedition
was ready, there was nothing to wait for save the moment to go out of
port, but Admiral Hawke was cruising before Brest; it was only in the
month of November, 1759, that the marquis of Conflans, who commanded the
fleet, could put to sea with twenty-one vessels.  Finding himself at once
pursued by the English squadron, he sought shelter in the difficult
channels at the mouth of the Vilaine.  The English dashed in after him.
A partial engagement, which ensued, was unfavorable; and the commander of
the French rear-guard, M. St. Andre du Verger, allowed himself to be
knocked to pieces by the enemy's guns in order to cover the retreat.  The
admiral ran ashore in the Bay of Le Croisic and burned his own vessel;
seven ships remained blockaded in the Vilaine.  M. de Conflans' job, as
the sailors called it at the time, was equivalent to a battle lost
without the chances and the honor of the struggle.  The English navy was
triumphant on every sea, and even in French waters.

The commencement of the campaign of 1759 had been brilliant in Germany;
the Duke of Broglie had successfully repulsed the attack made by
Ferdinand of Brunswick on his positions at Bergen; the prince had been
obliged to retire.  The two armies, united under M. de Contades, invaded
Hesse and moved upon the Weser; they were occupying Minden when Duke
Ferdinand threw himself upon them on the 1st of August.  The action of
the two French generals was badly combined, and the rout was complete.
It was the moment of Canada's last efforts, and the echo of that glorious
death-rattle reached even to Versailles.  The Duke of Choiseul had, on
the 19th of February, replied to a desperate appeal from Montcalm,
"I am very sorry to have to send you word that you must not expect any
re-enforcements.  To say nothing of their increasing the dearth of
provisions of which you have had only too much experience hitherto, there
would be great fear of their being intercepted by the English on the
passage, and, as the king could never send you aid proportionate to the
forces which the English are in a position to oppose to you, the efforts
made here to procure it for you would have no other effect than to rouse
the ministry in London to make still more considerable ones in order to
preserve the superiority it has acquired in that part of the continent."
The necessity for peace was, beginning to be admitted even, in Madame de
Pompadour's little cabinets.

Maria Theresa, however, was in no hurry to enter into negotiations;
her enemy seemed to be bending at last beneath the weight of the double
Austrian and Russian attack.  At one time Frederick had thought that he
saw all Germany rallying round him; now, beaten and cantoned in Saxony,
with the Austrians in front of him, during the winter of 1760, he was
everywhere seeking alliances and finding himself everywhere rejected.
"I have but two allies left," he would say, "valor and perseverance."
Repeated victories, gained at the sword's point, by dint of boldness and
in the extremity of peril, could not even protect Berlin.  The capital of
Prussia found itself constrained to open its gates to the enemy, on the
sole condition that the regiments of Cossacks should not pass the line of
enclosure.  When the regular troops withdrew, the generals had not been
able to prevent the city from being pillaged.  The heroic efforts of the
King of Prussia ended merely in preserving to him a foothold in Saxony.
The Russians occupied Poland.

Marshal Broglie, on becoming general-in-chief of the French army, had
succeeded in holding his own in Hesse; he frequently made Hanover
anxious.  To turn his attention elsewhither and in hopes of deciding the
French to quit Germany, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick attempted a
diversion on the Lower Rhine; he laid siege to Wesel, whilst the English
were preparing for a descent at Antwerp.  Marshal Broglie detached M. de
Castries to protect the city.  The French corps had just arrived; it was
bivouacking.  On the night between the 15th and 16th of October,
Chevalier d'Assas, captain in the regiment of Auvergne, was sent to
reconnoitre.  He had advanced some distance from his men, and happened to
stumble upon a large force of the enemy.  The Prince of Brunswick was
preparing to attack.  All the muskets covered the young captain.  "Stir,
and thou'rt a dead man," muttered threatening voices.  Without replying,
M. d'Assas collected all his strength and shouted, "Auvergne!  Here are
the foe!"  At the same instant he fell pierced by twenty balls.
[Accounts differ; but this is the tradition of the Assas family.]  The
action thus begun was a glorious one.  The hereditary prince was obliged
to abandon the siege of Wesel and to recross the Rhine.  The French
divisions maintained their positions.

[Illustration: Death of Chevalier D'Assas----233]

The war went on as bloodily as monotonously and fruitlessly, but the face
of Europe had lately altered.  The old King George II., who died on the
25th of September, 1760, had been succeeded on the throne of England by
his grandson, George III., aged twenty-two, the first really native
sovereign who had been called to reign over England since the fall of the
Stuarts.  George I. and George II. were Germans, in their feelings and
their manners as well as their language; the politic wisdom of the
English people had put up with them, but not without effort and
ill-humor; the accession of the young king was greeted with transport.
Pitt still reigned over Parliament and over England, governing a free
country sovereign-masterlike.  His haughty prejudice against France still
ruled all the decisions of the English government, but Lord Bute, the
young monarch's adviser, was already whispering pacific counsels destined
ere long to bear fruit.  Pitt's dominion was tottering when the first
overtures of peace arrived in London.  The Duke of Choiseul proposed a
congress.  He at the same time negotiated directly with England.  Whilst
Pitt kept his answer waiting, an English squadron blockaded Belle-Isle,
and the governor, M. de Sainte-Croix, left without relief, was forced to
capitulate after an heroic resistance.  When the conditions demanded by
England were at last transmitted to Versailles, the English flag was
floating over the citadel of Belle-Isle, the mouth of the Loire and of
the Vilaine was blockaded.  The arrogant pretensions of Mr. Pitt stopped
at nothing short of preserving the conquests of England in both
hemispheres; he claimed, besides, the demolition of Dunkerque "as a
memorial forever of the yoke imposed upon France."  Completely separating
the interests of England from those of the German allies, he did not even
reply to the proposals of M. de Choiseul as to the evacuation of Hesse
and Hanover.  Mistress of the sea, England intended to enjoy alone the
fruits of her victories.

[Illustration: ANTWERP----233]

The parleys were prolonged, and M. de Choiseul seemed to be resigned to
the bitterest pill of concession, when a new actor came upon the scene of
negotiation; France no longer stood isolated face to face with triumphant
England.  The younger branch of the house of Bourbon cast into the scale
the weight of its two crowns and the resources of its navy.

The King of Spain, Ferdinand VI., who died on the 10th of August, 1759,
had not left any children.  His brother, Charles III., King of Naples,
had succeeded him.  He brought to the throne of Spain a more lively
intelligence than that of the deceased king, a great aversion for
England, of which he had but lately had cause to complain, and the
traditional attachment of his race to the interests and the glory of
France.  The Duke of Choiseul managed to take skilful advantage of this
disposition.  At the moment when Mr. Pitt was haughtily rejecting the
modest ultimatum of the French minister, the treaty between France and
Spain, known by the name of Family Pact, was signed at Paris (August 15,
1761).

Never had closer alliance been concluded between the two courts, even at
the time when Louis XIV.  placed his grandson upon the throne of Spain.
It was that intimate union between all the branches of the house of
Bourbon which had but lately been the great king's conception, and which
had cost him so many efforts and so much blood; for the first time it was
becoming favorable to France; the noble and patriotic idea of M. de
Choiseul found an echo in the soul of the King of Spain; the French navy,
ruined and humiliated, the French colonies, threatened and all but lost,
found faithful support in the forces of Spain, recruited as they were.
by a long peace.  The King of the Two Sicilies and the Infante Duke of
Parma entered into the offensive and defensive alliance, but it was not
open to any other power in Europe to be admitted to this family union,
cemented by common interests more potent and more durable than the
transitory combinations of policy.  In all the ports of Spain ships were
preparing to put to sea.  Charles III. had undertaken to declare war
against the English if peace were not concluded before the 1st of May,
1762.  France promised in that case to cede to him the Island of Minorca.

All negotiations with England were broken off; on the 20th of September,
Mr. Pitt recalled his ambassador; this was his last act of power and
animosity; he at the same time proposed to the council of George III.
to include Spain forthwith in the hostilities.  Lord Bute opposed this;
he was supported by the young king as well as by the majority of the
ministers.  Pitt at once sent in his resignation, which was accepted.
Lord Bute and the Tories came into power.  Though more moderate in their
intentions, they were as yet urged forward by popular violence, and dared
not suddenly alter the line of conduct.  The family pact had raised the
hopes--always an easy task--of France, the national impulse inclined
towards the amelioration of the navy; the estates of Languedoc were the
first in the field, offering the king a ship of war; their example was
everywhere followed; sixteen ships, first-rates, were before long in
course of construction, a donation from the great political or financial
bodies; there were, besides, private subscriptions amounting to thirteen
millions; the Duke of Choiseul sought out commanders even amongst the
mercantile marine, and everywhere showed himself favorable to blue
officers, as the appellation then was of those whose birth excluded them
from the navy corps; the knowledge of the nobly born often left a great
deal to be desired, whatever may have been their courage and devotion.
This was a last generous effort on behalf of the shreds of France's
perishing colonies.  The English government did not give it time to bear
fruit; in the month of January, 1762, it declared war against Spain.
Before the year had rolled by, Cuba was in the hands of the English, the
Philippines were ravaged and the galleons laden with Spanish gold
captured by British ships.  The unhappy fate of France had involved her
generous ally.  The campaign attempted against Portugal, always hand in
hand with England, had not been attended with any result.  Martinique had
shared the lot of Guadaloupe, lately conquered by the English after an
heroic resistance.  Canada and India had at last succumbed.  War dragged
its slow length along in Germany.  The brief elevation of the young czar,
Peter III., a passionate admirer of the great Frederick, had delivered
the King of Prussia from a dangerous enemy, and promised to give him an
ally equally trusty and potent.  France was exhausted, Spain discontented
and angry; negotiations recommenced, on what disastrous conditions for
the French colonies in both hemispheres has already been remarked; in
Germany the places and districts occupied by France were to be restored;
Lord Bute, like his great rival, required the destruction of the port of
Dunkerque.

This was not enough for the persistent animosity of Pitt.  The
preliminaries of peace had been already signed at Fontainebleau on the 3d
of November, 1762: when they were communicated to Parliament, the fallen
minister, still the nation's idol and the real head of the people, had
himself carried to the House of Commons.  He was ill, suffering from a
violent attack of gout; two of his friends led him with difficulty to his
place, and supported him during his long speech; being exhausted, he sat
down towards the end, contrary to all the usages of the House, without,
however, having once faltered in his attacks upon a peace too easily
made, of which it was due to him that England was able to dictate the
conditions.  "It is as a maritime power," he exclaimed, "that France is
chiefly if not exclusively formidable to us;" and the ardor of his spirit
restored to his enfeebled voice the dread tones which Parliament and the
nation had been wont to hear "what we gain in this respect is doubly
precious from the loss that results to her.  America, sir, was conquered
in Germany.  Now you are leaving to France a possibility of restoring her
navy."

The peace was signed, however, not without ill humor on the part of
England, but with a secret feeling of relief; the burdens which weighed
upon the country had been increasing every year.  In 1762, Lord Bute had
obtained from Parliament four hundred and fifty millions (eighteen
million pounds) to keep up the war.  "I wanted the peace to be a serious
and a durable one," said the English minister in reply to Pitt's attacks;
"if we had increased our demands, it would have been neither the one nor
the other."

M. de Choiseul submitted in despair to the consequences of the
long-continued errors committed by the government of Louis XV.  "Were I
master," said he, "we would be to the English what Spain was to the
Moors; if this course were taken, England would be destroyed in thirty
years from now."  The king was a better judge of his weakness and of the
general exhaustion.  "The peace we have just made is neither a good one
nor a glorious one; nobody sees that better than I," he said in his
private correspondence; "but, under such unhappy circumstances, it could
not be better, and I answer for it that if we had continued the war, we
should have made, a still worse one next year."  All the patriotic
courage and zeal of the Duke of Choiseul, all the tardy impulse springing
from the nation's anxieties, could not suffice even to palliate the
consequences of so many years' ignorance, feebleness, and incapacity in
succession.

Prussia and Austria henceforth were left to confront one another, the
only actors really interested in the original struggle, the last to quit
the battle-field on to which they had dragged their allies.  By an
unexpected turn of luck, Frederick II. had for a moment seen Russia
becoming his ally; a fresh blow came to wrest from him this powerful
support.  The Czarina Catherine II., Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst and wife
of the Czar Peter III., being on bad terms with her husband and in dread
of his wrath, had managed to take advantage of the young czar's
imprudence in order to excite a mutiny amongst the soldiers; he had been
deposed, and died before long in prison.  Catherine was proclaimed in his
place.  With her accession to the throne there commenced for Russia a new
policy, equally bold and astute, having for its sole aim, unscrupulously
and shamelessly pursued, the aggrandizement and consolidation of the
imperial power; Russia became neutral in the strife between Prussia and
Austria.  The two sovereigns, left without allies and with their
dominions drained of men and money, agreed to a mutual exchange of their
conquests; the boundaries of their territories once more became as they
had been before the Seven Years' War.  Frederick calculated at more than
eight hundred thousand men the losses caused to the belligerents by this
obstinate and resultless struggle, the fruit of wicked ambition or
culpable weaknesses on the part of governments.  Thanks to the
indomitable energy and the equally zealous and unscrupulous ability of
the man who had directed her counsels during the greater part of the war,
England alone came triumphant out of the strife.  She had won India
forever; and, for some years at least, civilized America, almost in its
entirety, obeyed her laws.  She had won what France had lost, not by
superiority of arms, or even of generals, but by the natural and proper
force of a free people, ably and liberally governed.

The position of France abroad, at the end of the Seven Years' War, was
as painful as it was humiliating; her position at home was still more
serious, and the deep-lying source of all the reverses which had come to
overwhelm the French.  Slowly lessened by the faults and misfortunes of
King Louis XIV.'s later years, the kingly authority, which had fallen,
under Louis XV., into hands as feeble as they were corrupt, was ceasing
to inspire the nation with the respect necessary for the working of
personal power: public opinion was no longer content to accuse the
favorite and the ministers; it was beginning to make the king responsible
for the evils suffered and apprehended.  People waited in vain for a
decision of the crown to put a stop to the incessantly renewed struggles
between the Parliament and the clergy.  Disquieted at one and the same
time by the philosophical tendencies which were beginning to spread in
men's minds, and by the comptroller-general Machault's projects for
exacting payment of the imposts upon ecclesiastical revenues, the
Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont, and the Bishop of Mirepoix,
Boyer, who was in charge of the benefice-list, conceived the idea of
stifling these dangerous symptoms by an imprudent recourse to the
spiritual severities so much dreaded but lately by the people.  Several
times over, the last sacraments were denied to the dying who had declined
to subscribe to the bull Unigenitus, a clumsy measure, which was sure to
excite public feeling and revive the pretensions of the Parliaments to
the surveillance, in the last resort, over the government of the church;
Jansenism, fallen and persecuted, but still living in the depths of
souls, numbered amongst the ranks of the magistracy, as well as in the
University of Paris, many secret partisans; several parish-priests had
writs of personal seizure issued against them, and their goods were
confiscated.  Decrees succeeded decrees; in spite of the king's feeble
opposition the struggle was extending and reaching to the whole of
France.  On the 22d of February, 1753, the Parliament of Paris received
orders to suspend all the proceedings they had commenced on the ground of
refusals of the sacraments; the king did not consent even to receive the
representations.  By the unanimous vote of the hundred and fifty-eight
members sitting on the Court, Parliament determined to give up all
service until the king should be pleased to listen.  "We declare," said
the representation, "that our zeal is boundless, and that we feel
sufficient courage to fall victims to our fidelity.  The Court could not
serve without being wanting to their duties and betraying their oaths."

Indolent and indifferent as he was, King Louis XV. acted as seldom and as
slowly as he could; he did not like strife, and gladly saw the
belligerents exhausting against one another their strength and their
wrath; on principle, however, and from youthful tradition, he had never
felt any liking for the Parliaments.  "The long robes and the clergy are
always at daggers drawn," he would say to Madame de Pompadour "they drive
me distracted with their quarrels, but I detest the long robes by far the
most.  My clergy, at bottom, are attached to me and faithful to me; the
others would like to put me in tutelage. . . .  They will end by ruining
the state; they are a pack of republicans. . . .  However, things will
last my time, at any rate."  Severe measures against the Parliament were
decided upon in council.  Four magistrates were arrested and sent to
fortresses; all the presidents, councillors of inquests and of requests,
were exiled; the grand chamber, which alone was spared, refused to
administer justice.  Being transferred to Pontoise, it persisted in its
refusal.  It was necessary to form a King's Chamber, installed at the
Louvre; all the inferior jurisdictions refused to accept its decrees.
After a year's strife, the Parliament returned in triumph to Paris in the
month of August, 1754; the clergy received orders not to require from the
dying any theological adhesion.  Next year, the Archbishop of Paris, who
had paid no attention to the prohibition, was exiled in his turn.

Thus, by mutually weakening each other, the great powers and the great
influences in the state were wasting away; the reverses of the French
arms, the loss of their colonies, and the humiliating peace of Paris
aggravated the discontent.  In default of good government the people are
often satisfied with glory.  This consolation, to which the French nation
had but lately been accustomed, failed it all at once; mental irritation,
for a long time silently brooding, cantoned in the writings of
philosophers and in the quatrains of rhymesters, was beginning to spread
and show itself amongst the nation; it sought throughout the state an
object for its wrath; the powerful society of the Jesuits was the first
to bear all the brunt of it.

A French Jesuit, Father Lavalette, had founded a commercial house at
Martinique.  Ruined by the war, he had become bankrupt to the extent of
three millions; the order having refused to pay, it was condemned by the
Parliament to do so.  The responsibility was declared to extend to all
the members of the Institute, and public opinion triumphed over the
condemnation with a " quasi-indecent " joy, says the advocate Barbier.
Nor was it content with this legitimate satisfaction.  One of the courts
which had until lately been most devoted to the Society of Jesus had just
set an example of severity.  In 1759, the Jesuits had been driven from
Portugal by the Marquis of Pombal, King Joseph I.'s all-powerful
minister; their goods had been confiscated, and their principal,
Malagrida, handed over to the Inquisition, had just been burned as a
heretic (Sept. 20, 1761).

The Portuguese Jesuits had been feebly defended by the grandees; the
clergy were hostile to them.  In France, their enemies showed themselves
bolder than their defenders.  Proudly convinced of the justice of their
cause, the Fathers had declined the jurisdiction of the grand council,
to which they had a right, as all ecclesiastical bodies had, and they had
consented to hand over to the Parliament the registers of their
constitutions, up to that time carefully concealed from the eyes of the
profane.  The skilful and clear-sighted hostility of the magistrates was
employed upon the articles of this code, so stringently framed of yore by
enthusiastic souls and powerful minds, forgetful or disdainful of the
sacred rights of human liberty.  All the services rendered by the Jesuits
to the cause of religion and civilization appeared effaced; forgotten
were their great missionary enterprises, their founders and their
martyrs, in order to set forth simply their insatiable ambition, their
thirst after power, their easy compromises with evil passions condemned
by the Christian faith.  The assaults of the philosophers had borne their
fruit in the public mind; the olden rancor of the Jansenists
imperceptibly promoted the severe inquiry openly conducted by the
magistrates.  Madame de Pompadour dreaded the influence of the Jesuits;